To give an example of the complexity of this problem, this paper presents a study of the most popular dating method, potassium/argon.

The discussion of some phenomena taking place during rock crystallization reveals huge discrepancies between the model theory and the reality.

Outliers of basalt throughout western Siberia, and extensive subcrops within the West Siberian Basin, are often associated with the 250 Ma Siberian Traps volcanism.

Borehole samples located south of the city of Chelyabinsk gave ages of 243.3 ± 0.6 Ma and 242.2 ± 0.6 Ma clearly demonstrating that volcanism to the southeast of the Urals is ~7 Ma younger than the main activity on the Siberian craton and within the WSB (Reichow et al. Sills with Triassic ages were also reported (Ivanov et al., 2005) in the Kansk-Taseevskaya basin along the southern border of the Siberian craton and for extrusive rocks in the Semeitau area, Kazakhstan (Lyons et al., 2002).

These results indicate that volcanism in Siberia occurred in at least two stages.

The belief that radiodating methods give absolute measurements of time is widespread as a result of scientific popularization in journals, conferences, and the media.Ar ages (whole-rock, biotite and plagioclase separates) exist for basalts and gabbros from Noril'sk, Putorana, Maymecha-Kotuy, West Siberian Basin, Taimyr, Kuznetsk Basin and the polar Urals.Normalised to a common standard, they all lie within error of each other, and indicate a magmatic crystallization ages of between 248-250 Ma (Figure 1).The choice of these initial conditions affects the results.These assumptions are not demonstrated, only supposed to be true.Anomalous « K/Ar model ages » are frequently reported in the literature.